Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ-), along with Vice President JD Vance, today addressed the 20th Annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, and the following are excerpts of his remarks:

I would like to recognize my dear wife Marie who I met more than fifty years ago in the pro-life movement.

She has been—and continues to be—a powerful, talented and incredibly wise, faith-filled pro-life leader, especially in the battle to defend human life around the world serving on Holy See delegations at the UN and through an organization she founded two decades ago called the Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues.    

Words are inadequate to express my love, respect, admiration and gratitude for her.

When facing a major health challenge last year, her faith and indomitable spirit helped to bring about a recovery that her doctors called a miracle. 

Marie and I want to thank you for your persevering prayers for her healing.

With us today is our youngest daughter Elyse—an attorney who along with her husband Julio are strong pro-life leaders—who are expecting their third child in March—our ninth grandchild.

Special thanks to the Catholic Prayer Breakfast leadership for this wonderful 20^th annual prayer breakfast and this award and the recognition of the responsibility that goes along with it.

St. John Paul the Great’s apostolic exhortation in CHRISTIFIDELES LAICI makes clear that the “work that awaits everyone in the vineyard of the Lord is so great there is no place for idleness…” and that the lay faithful must fully embrace our “co-responsibility to the mission of the Church…and his call: “Public Life: for Everyone and by Everyone”.

Thankfully the amazing people in this room—laity and religious alike—have answered the call.  We are all in.  Indeed, Marie and I are richly blessed in our diocese to have an inspiring, and remarkable leader, Bishop David O’Connell.

St. John Paul the Great encouraged us: “Never tire of firmly speaking out in defense of life from its conception, and do not be deterred from the commitment to defend the dignity of every human person with courageous determination.”

Even though at times we may get tired and grow weary. I know I do.

The existential threats to life and human dignity today, however, have entered a new phase that absolutely begs our time, talent and intervention. None of us have the luxury of growing weary.

Abortion has become a weapon of mass destruction—more than 66 million babies aborted in the United States since 1973—a numbing death toll of children that equates with every man, woman and child living in France or looked at another way, more than the populations of Texas, Florida and Illinois combined.

As never before, we need to expose abortion methods to a segment of society that has chosen to be blind to the realities of brutally dismembering helpless babies with sharp knife-like curettes or poisoning babies with pills that literally starve them to death and often result in their bodies being flushed down a toilet.

The risks posed to women from what is euphemistically called medication abortion must be exposed as well including the sham trials that purported to demonstrate safety, non-reporting of adverse events and dispensing this dangerous drug by mail. Under Clinton, Obama and Biden, FDA politized the process and utterly failed to expose the harmful impacts on women—that must change.

We know that the cruel injustice of abortion need not be forever and that each day, despite setbacks, many unborn children and their mothers have been and are being protected and by the grace of God, a culture of life is coming.

Since the reversal of Roe v. Wade—achieved by the three Supreme Court Justices President Trump appointed and authored by Justice Alito who is from my former hometown of Hamilton—half the states today have laws to protect unborn children saving over 200,000 children over two years.

President Trump issued several powerful pro-life executive orders including reinstatement of the Mexico City Policy to begin reversing Biden’s hijacking of global health funding—including the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

With love and compassion, we strive to tangibly assist women—especially through the extraordinary work of pregnancy care centers and outreach with a message of healing and reconciliation for post-abortion women. The Marist poll commissioned by the Knights of Columbus found that a supermajority of Americans—83%—support these centers.

Nevertheless, pregnancy care centers are under siege by governors, lawmakers and Planned Parenthood—also known as Child Abuse Inc—an organization that has killed over ten million babies in their clinics.

We must end taxpayer funds to Planned Parenthood.

St. Mother Teresa warned: “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

###